title: Create and configure the gpadmin User

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Install sudo & git (if missing)

If sudo & git command is not already installed, run the following command to install it:

:::note In environments like Docker, the root user will be able to use sudo without a password prompt once it is installed. :::

Create and configure the gpadmin user

To prepare the environment for Apache Cloudberry development, we need to create and configure a dedicated gpadmin user.

  1. Create a user ‘gpadmin’ with matching group, home directory, and bash shell:

    sudo useradd -U -m -s /bin/bash gpadmin

  2. Grant password-less sudo access to gpadmin:

    echo 'gpadmin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' | sudo tee /etc/sudoers.d/90-gpadmin

  3. Verify the gpadmin user setup:

    sudo -u gpadmin sudo whoami

    If the output is root, the configuration is correct.

Required configuration

This script performs three main tasks as the gpadmin user:

  • Updates .bashrc to source Cloudberry environment variables
  • Sets up SSH key pair for passwordless login (if not already present)
  • Configures proper SSH directory permissions for security

The script uses a heredoc (EOF) block to execute multiple commands under the gpadmin user context. This will be used multiple time throughout these instructions.

sudo -u gpadmin bash <<'EOF'
# Add Cloudberry environment setup to .bashrc
echo -e '\n# Add Cloudberry entries
if [ -f /usr/local/cloudberry-db/greenplum_path.sh ]; then
  source /usr/local/cloudberry-db/greenplum_path.sh
fi

# US English with UTF-8 character encoding
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
' >> /home/gpadmin/.bashrc

# Set up SSH for passwordless access
mkdir -p /home/gpadmin/.ssh
if [ ! -f /home/gpadmin/.ssh/id_rsa ]; then
  ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -C 'apache-cloudberry-dev' -f /home/gpadmin/.ssh/id_rsa -N ""
fi
cat /home/gpadmin/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> /home/gpadmin/.ssh/authorized_keys

# Set proper SSH directory permissions
chmod 700 /home/gpadmin/.ssh
chmod 600 /home/gpadmin/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 644 /home/gpadmin/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
EOF